A View from the Bridge

"Ivo van Hove’s magnificent reconception of Arthur Miller’s 'A View From the Bridge,' takes you into extreme emotional territory that you seldom dare visit in daily life. At the end of its uninterrupted two hours, you are wrung out, scooped out and so exhausted that you’re wide awake...Mr. Strong’s is the most powerful single performance you’re likely to see this year." Full Review

"No stars, no props and a minimal set help us focus on the tortured relationships at the heart of this modern tragedy. The tension never dips as the show heads toward the kind of mind-blowing climax that’s the stuff of Broadway legend. Admittedly, those familiar with the 1955 play’s web of passion, jealousy and betrayal will get more out of this production’s bracing new insights. But the show’s so strong, its impact feels universal." Full Review

"While this may seem like a bold reimagining of an American classic by a European auteur, it's actually a lot closer to Miller's original intent…The aptly named Strong embodies those urges in his earthy, virile portrayal of Eddie…Van Hove does Miller a great honor by taking 'A View from the Bridge' out of the museum and asserting it as a living, breathing work capable of being reimagined ad infinitum, like the best plays by Shakespeare." Full Review

"His highly-stylized mounting, like many of his creations, seems to give his vision authority over the play's content. It's different, for sure, but enlightening? Not so sure. The cold and stripped-down production has enough textual cuts that it can be called 'A View From Abridged…' There seems to be a lack of subtlety that the director imposes throughout evening." Full Review

"Breathe, everybody, breathe! Audiences really need to be reminded of that at the end of Ivo Van Hove’s magnificent production…The show, anchored by a towering performance from Mark Strong as a longshoreman whose willful blindness causes his whole world to come crashing down, is both visually gorgeous and an emotional wipeout…Strong scales those heights, giving an electrifying performance of raw power and terrifying beauty." Full Review

"Director Ivo van Hove digs down and grabs the pulsing, bloody heart of Arthur Miller’s 1956 drama…Mark Strong gives a performance of harrowing intensity as doomed Eddie Carbone…Van Hove stages this elegant and lean tale with almost perverse understatement…The simplicity and restraint, however, gathers to a ferocious and bloody head that leaves you breathless and aghast...The ensemble is uniformly superb, palpably relishing van Hove’s emotionally transparent approach." Full Review

"The lack of clutter is certainly chic, but without the furniture and props Miller specified, some points are unclear…What makes this slight misfit of play and production finally unimportant is that the actors are so devastatingly good…Some of the credit for the cast’s superb work obviously belongs to van Hove; he knew he needed actors who could stand up to his powerful, showy interventions. It’s a fair trade; those interventions probably made this revival viable." Full Review

"This is an exhilarating production, assured and perilous, abstract and concretely physical…In Mark Strong’s extraordinary and visceral performance we see a man who has become a stranger to himself, a paragon of manhood unmanned and set adrift both by his own desires and by challenges to his masculine assumptions...Strong is well supported by the other cast members, though accents can waver between south Brooklyn and north London." Full Review

"The intense performance by Mark Strong, making his Broadway debut, supported by the rest of the outstanding cast, makes this 'View' worth viewing, but the powerful acting is not what makes this production distinct from previous versions. It’s the direction by Ivo van Hove...aggressive staging has provoked passionate and opposing reactions...Any production whose cast so engages the audience with the playwright’s words pays the ultimate respect to the playwright." Full Review

"It is clear that the director has built his own show on Miller's script. 'A View From the Bridge' may have been written in a relatively conventional naturalistic style, but it teems with life - ugly, vivid, and violent. Van Hove's staging freezes its emotions and arranges them into a sleek, minimalist tableau. You may very well enjoy it, but I hope that someday you get to see the play that Arthur Miller wrote. " Full Review

"With just six key parts, having two of them so poorly cast made a strong evening of theater seem a dreadful disappointment for being so close to greatness. A little more care and this would have been a classic staging…Strong and the two women in his life are exceptional and make this flawed but interesting production a must-see." Full Review

"Ivo van Hove's stunning reappraisal of the 1956 Arthur Miller drama is led by a knockout performance from Mark Strong…Performed by a sizzling ensemble led by Mark Strong, this is powerhouse theater that leaves you breathless…Van Hove strips the play down to its raw bones…By peeling away the real-world trappings, the production releases something primal in Miller's drama." Full Review

"Mr. Van Hove...doesn’t seem to care whether any of his over-familiar avant-garde tricks are organically related to the script. Instead, they’re poured over it like a rancid sauce...What you find underneath is a staging that gets to the point of Miller’s play with near-naturalistic directness. Not only does he move actors around fluidly, but he also knows how to pick them...Unfortunately, he neither trusts them nor the play, which is pretentious in its own way." Full Review

"Hove takes a scalpel-edged, stripped-down yet over-the-top approach that drains the play of its naturalistic flavor...But what really hurts the two-hour production is Hove's never-ending use of an unsettling, dirge-like soundscape, which interrupts the dialogue and is often disconnected from the storytelling...Mark Strong conveys Eddie's inner torment with a quiet intensity." Full Review

"Van Hove's spin, however, does not deepen or redefine this basic struggle; it simply presents it, divorced from its anchoring location and era, as if overeager to highlight the story's timeliness...The performances are all rock-solid within a very difficult framework…This production proves that van Hove's attempts to untether 'A View From the Bridge' have only locked it away further, behind an opaque cube that, like that of his set, he'd better off lifting away." Full Review

"The buzz around the current production hangs on the inventiveness of director Ivo van Hove. His refinement of the play to essentials, devoid of conventions of costume and set, offers us a truly fresh take on an American classic...A re-do of such an oft-produced play has to have a driving vision-or why go there? The vision here is raw in the primal sense of the word." Full Review

"This is the very rare production that matches the complexity of the text, with its mixed-messaged collision of the cerebral and the sensual, a dichotomy at the heart of everything Miller ever wrote…Van Hove's brilliance is multifaceted, but much rests on his ability to focus the mind and soul on a work's tiny moments." Full Review

"Strong is manly, magnetic and as persuasive as a heart attack…The stark staging by van Hove, a Broadway newcomer who’s known for stripped-back takes on classics, gets straight to the meat of the story…If there’s a quibble it’s that Eddie’s final fate may be somewhat unclear if you don’t know the play. Also, constant underscoring of sacred music, ambient sounds and percussive beats leads to diminishing returns." Full Review

"I have to admit I’m of two minds about Van Hove’s 'A View From the Bridge.' My 30-year-old critic self probably would have thrilled to the ballsiness of turning a naturalistic melodrama into a Greek tragedy…But my older-critic self says, 'Leave the damned play alone...' The Germans call this director’s theater, and it’s not for me. Despite a splendid cast led by Mark Strong as Eddie…And especially Nicola Walker, who is heartbreaking as Bea." Full Review

"Van Hove has directed a classy cast to make the Carbone family and other key characters come to vivid and believable life…Mark Strong's Eddie is the magnetic centerpiece…A visually and aurally elegant production...There are a few spots between the breathtaking opening and finale that feel a bit slow without more realistic details about the neighborhood...Still, this is a a highly theatrical, not to be missed tribute to the play's durability." Full Review

"Hypnotic power that is rarely seen in our theater…Van Hove’s version makes you feel that you have never seen the play before...The casting is superb and each actor’s presence is palpably felt...When 'A View from the Bridge' is over, the audience knows that it has participated in a communal act of catharsis...This production demonstrates without a doubt that this is what Arthur Miller was attempting in 'View' and has succeeded completely." Full Review

"From the first moments of director Ivo van Hove’s stripped-down and downright stunning production of 'A View From the Bridge,' it is clear this will be unlike any other …This 'View' moves with the terrifying inevitability of myth…Most of this happens on designer Jan Versweyveld’s elevated plain square with an emotional honesty that makes even Miller’s heavier lines seem almost improvised." Full Review

"Van Hove and his excellent cast take the lid off Eddie’s obsessions and inhibitions, ending in a literal blood bath. Van Hove is highly dramatic, but he isn’t always very subtle. Some of the performances, though, are both. Strong turns Eddie’s tragedy into an utter inability and unwillingness to understand his own motives." Full Review

"If you think you've seen Arthur Miller's dark classic 'A View From the Bridge' enough times, think again. The muscular production is a stunning, imaginative theatrical experience, an impassioned interpretation that really brings the heat to Miller's gripping drama…Eventually all the actors enfold one another in a haunting, anguished tableau, a brilliant visual summation by van Hove of how people in this close-knit community must stand or fall together." Full Review

"It’s hard to turn your eyes away from the stage for even an instant. This is theater at its most direct and enthralling, with the usual supporting elements stripped away so that the characters, on a nearly bare stage, are vividly revealed as creatures of pure, irresistible human impulse…If the atmosphere is stylized, the performances are totally naturalistic, led by English actor Mark Strong’s haunting portrayal of Eddie." Full Review